Norse code

Australians typically find the prospect of a white Christmas very appealing. So Ned Nederlander and I agreed and decreed respectively that Norway would be a fitting destination for the 2013 festive season.

My certainty that Queenstown, New Zealand was the undoubted winner of Most Spectacular Aircraft Landing in the World title was shaken by our mid-winter afternoon approach to Tromsø, at the opposite end of the planet. Land at both at least once in your life if you can.

 



On our first night inside the Arctic Circle, we drove teams of huskies through a dreamy snowscape, lit beautifully by a hazy bloated moon. As the cold air pinched my face, I kept pinching myself to make sure I was really there. I wondered if I could ever again appreciate the sweltering heat of an Aussie beach Christmas .

Dashing through the snow ...

When I needed to slow or stop, the lead dog would look at me over his shoulder with utter disdain. The rest of the team bounced impatiently on invisible pogo sticks, straining incessantly against the harness, yelping to be allowed to run some more. These dogs were not going to give up until they were airborne. Second star to the right and straight on till morning.

Later that night we retired to a communal tent, modelled on those used by the indigenous Sami people. We tried not to think about Rudolph, that famous Christmas helper, as we lay on the deliciously warm skins of his cousins, spread over a thick bed of cut branches that had been piled into a wooden box bed. Fur on fir. A pot belly stove in the centre of the tent made us forget that we were actually arctic warriors at all.

Please can we keep him?

After breakfast we visited the dogs, who were clearly grateful for the remarkable leadership we had demonstrated to them on the previous night. De Jongens both reminded me that over two years earlier, when they had so stridently resisted our planned move to the Lowlands, I had glibly promised them a Dutch dog, if only they would let go of the nice Passport Control Officer’s leg and calmly get on the plane. No dog had been forthcoming. Suddenly they were demanding a five-dog team of huskies, which apparently equates to my abandoned promise, with interest. 

I soon distracted them with a cunning display of my previously under-valued snow-mobiling skills. I raced oh so competently through a scene reminiscent of a James Bond movie, blissfully unaware that Kleine Jongen was developing hypothermia on the seat behind me. I was mesmerised by the sight of the sun standing on her solar tip-toes while trying, and failing, to peak over the horizon at 11:30am. Instead she left a taunting golden stain low in the sky, and cast an eerie blue light over an endless tub of vanilla icecream.

 

 
 

 

On another night we ventured a hundred kilometres or so further north of Tromsø, and were treated to a spectacular northern lights display that justified my fifty year wait to see it. Just remarkable.
 

 

 

 

 

Undoubtedly, we peaked too early on this holiday, so the next few days in Oslo were always likely to be underwhelming. We wiled away a half day at the Polar Fram Museum, and learned much about the people who had made the Arctic and Antarctic areas accessible, including the Inuit people, who gave me the quote of the trip. "The one who listens to his parents will live longer ... and have a better life". Lovely script too.

Inuit wisdom

Yet somehow learning about all those wild and crazy exploits just made me want to go and have a lie down in a hot bath with a good book, a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Ned and I also made a lightning visit to the Nobel Peace Centre in the hour before it closed one evening. Should you ever need it, I recommend a visit as a good way to humble oneself. Being confronted with the stories of every Nobel Peace Prize winner and their actions and noble motivations puts one’s own antics in a sad perspective.  It left me wondering what my personal contribution to world peace should be...

Then, we took a train to Bergen on the west coast. For a large part of the seven hour journey I was a character in The Polar Express.  Grote Jongen confirmed my fantasy when he leaned over and said “I keep expecting the train to be stopped by a herd of reindeer, and for someone to pull the engineer’s beard”. Sadly, the trip was tarnished somewhat by an unfortunate incident involving a laptop, a down jacket, a sudden lurch (perhaps someone pulled the engineer’s beard after all?) and a full cup of hot chocolate. Dear reader, I can reveal that it was NOTHING like the hot chocolate scene in The Polar Express.  However, my calm (numb?) response to our incident and my handling of the hysterical protagonists, albeit through clenched teeth, in a carriage packed to the rafters with people who politely pretended they hadn’t seen a thing, may very well be my contribution to world peace.

Bergen was the final stop in our tinselled triumvirate of Norwegian towns. Clearly it has the potential to be a quaint and charming town, but its main claim to fame appears to be that it has the highest rainfall of any town this side of the Amazon. I believe that a good proportion of its annual rainfall fell during our visit. The fjord cruise operators (who had lured us to Bergen in the first place) had given in to the weather, cancelled all trips and gone home two days earlier than their websites suggested. 

Bergen; quaint, yet somehow not ...

In the end it probably didn’t matter, since Kleine Jongen surprised us all on our first night in Bergen with a spectacular middle-of-the-night vomiting performance with multiple encores. The spectacle was increased as a consequence of the combined affects of a dark hallway, an open suitcase, some bed-swapping earlier in the night, and an unfortunate case of mistaken parental identity. We concluded that it must have been caused by something he'd eaten on The Polar Express.

The following morning Kleine Jongen awoke, exhausted and lacking Christmas cheer, although with a much improved constitution, so we ventured out to see what Bergen had to offer. Not much, it turns out.

Not a single restaurant in the entire town was open on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.The few shops in town that were open were staffed by people who didn’t really want to be there.

“What a stupid time to come on holidays” growled one woman when she learned of our intention to spend Christmas in her town.  The fact that she was pocketing a good proportion of the Norwegian gross domestic product after selling us the ingredients for our Christmas Eve hotel room picnic did not seem to give her any cause to smile.

The hotel that we were staying in, which claimed enough stars to know better, didn’t even offer us a Christmas drink. Ever self-sufficient (especially when it comes to Christmas alcohol), I approached the decidedly un-festive hotel receptionist on Christmas Eve and asked if I could borrow a corkscrew. I’m quite certain she considered stabbing me with it. “A corkscrew???” Deep sigh. “I’ll see. Wait here”. Ho ho ho. Good tidings to you and all of your kin.

Minutes into our family festivities, we realised that we had been wrong after all to blame the train food for Kleine Jongen’s demise. Ned, Grote Jongen and I found ourselves BERRRRGEN  in Bergen for the next twelve hours. Being sick far from home is never fun, but I must say that there is a certain joy that comes from being able to drop a pile of “soiled” towels and sheets outside a hotel room door and have them magically disappear by morning!  When I staggered to the foyer at 2am and requested some clean sheets and towels, my receptionist friend gave me a look that left me in no doubt that she thought overuse of the borrowed corkscrew was the root of my problems.

I collapsed into my bed again, and passed Christmas Day alternately snoozing and staring at the rain hammering against the window. And just like that, the prospect of a sweltering Aussie beach Christmas suddenly seemed very appealing after all.

 

Another time, another place